Graduate School of
Oceanography
University of Rhode Island
South Ferry Rd.
Narragansett, R.I. O2882
USA

Introduction

The Marine Geological Samples Laboratory (MGSL)
of the Graduate
School of Oceanography (GSO),
University of Rhode Island serves as the central repository for
dredge rocks, deep-sea cores, and land-based geological samples
collected by the Marine Geology and Geophysics group at GSO/URI. The
facility is located on the Narragansett Bay Campus of the University
of Rhode Island in Narragansett, R.I. Its main purpose is to assure
that geological samples are properly stored, described, preserved and
available for use by qualified investigators from both inside and
outside the institution. A large part of the funding for curatorial
activities in the MGSL is obtained from the Ocean Science Division of
the National Science Foundation.

Facilities

MGSL is housed in a 6,000
square ft. prefabricated building containing laboratories
and storage facilities
for the curation of marine geological samples. A major part of the
building is devoted to the storage of dredge rocks and
island/continent rock samples. These samples are stored in 12' high
rows of dexidren steel racks. The other major area of sample storage
consist of a 10,000 square ft. refrigerated room which houses the
deep-sea sediment core collection and is maintained at a temperature
of 3-4 degree C. The remaining area of the MGSL is subdivided into
three laboratories and a curator's office. There are two labs for the
processing of hard rocks (coarse and fine prep labs) where samples
can be laid out for description and subsampling. A separate core lab
is available for the description and sampling of sediment cores.

Sample
Collection

The MGSL maintains a large
collection of marine geological samples that are available to
qualified investigators through the University of Rhode Island's
sample
distribution policy.
Sample locations are grouped by Marsden Squares and a searchable
Filemaker Pro 4.0 database is available for each of the major sample
types: